Adolescent Drug Use: Development, Prevention, and Policy

Project Description

This Senior Scientist Award supported a portion of the principal investigator’s salary. Dr. Dodge’s research contributed to the societal prevention of serious problem outcomes, including substance abuse, behaviors that place one at risk for HIV/AIDS, and child abuse, in two related populations: multi-problem adolescents and young high-risk mothers.

Project Aims

The specific aims of his research were:

  1. to understand how chronic problem behaviors develop in these two populations;
  2. to translate findings from basic science into tests of ongoing prevention programs for these two populations; and
  3. to learn how to translate efficacious prevention models into communitywide change.

Project Findings

A Dynamic Cascade Model of the Development of Substance-Use Onset